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Murray Handwerker, 89, Dies; Made Nathan’s More Famous

Murray Handwerker, who transformed his father’s Brooklyn hot dog business, Nathan’s Famous, into a celebrated national fast-food chain, died Saturday at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. He was 89.

His son William confirmed his death.

Nathan’s Famous, at Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island, was opened by Mr. Handwerker’s father and mother in 1916 and soon became an American legend, its name virtually synonymous with hot dogs.

Mr. Handwerker spent his childhood at Nathan’s Famous. “I was raised behind the counter of the Coney store,” he told The New York Times in 1986. “My playpen was a 3-by-3 crate the hot dog rolls used to come in.”

His father, Nathan, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, and his mother, Ida, had opened the stand with $300 borrowed from the entertainers Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor, friends of his father’s who had yet to become stars. Nathan’s sold all-beef hot dogs at a nickel, half of what its Coney Island competitor was charging.

“We were the original fast-food operation,” Mr. Handwerker recalled in an oral history, “It Happened in Brooklyn,” by Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, rereleased in 2009 by SUNY Press. “We called it finger food; you didn’t need a knife and fork. But it was always quality. My father insisted on that.”

It was Murray Handwerker who turned the family business from a famous hot dog stand to a famous national chain, which went public in 1968. After returning from World War II Army service, Mr. Handwerker joined Nathan’s Famous in 1946 and, his son William said, “had many ideas of expanding.”

In “It Happened in Brooklyn,” Mr. Handwerker recalled returning home with other soldiers in the 1940s and wanting to add other foods to the Nathan’s Famous menu.

“I realized the American soldier had been exposed to French food, his tastes had become more sophisticated,” he said. Despite his father’s objections, Mr. Handwerker successfully introduced shrimp and clams to Nathan’s menu. He later added a delicatessen line.

There were other disagreements with his father, including one over whether to let restaurant managers have days off during the summer. At the time, Murray Handwerker said, the managers were working seven days a week, and he insisted they be given a day off. The first week, they all got terrible sunburns and could not come into work the next day. “My father gave me hell,” he recalled in “It Happened in Brooklyn.”

Mr. Handwerker was born in Brooklyn on July 25, 1921, and graduated from New York University in 1947 with a degree in French. “I loved languages,” he told The Times in 1986, “but the only time I used French was during the old World’s Fair when a lot of French people came to Coney Island for hot dogs.”

Photo

A busy Nathan's Famous counter in Coney Island in 1975.Credit
Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

By the mid-1960s Nathan’s had three restaurants, and Mr. Handwerker, who became president of the company in 1968, oversaw its expansion over the next decade by adding dozens of company-owned restaurants and franchised units. He also published a cookbook featuring Nathan’s Famous recipes. He became chairman in 1971.

By the early 1980s, Nathan’s was struggling. Its stock, which had reached $42 in 1971, had fallen to $1 by 1981. Mr. Handwerker was forced to close some of the restaurants and abandon the idea of a franchise that would offer a more limited menu. “Nathan’s forte is supposed to be variety,” he said at the time. The company also ran into trouble with some of its franchisees.

The business survived, however, as Mr. Handwerker continued to emphasize its main menu item. “The hot dog,” his son said, “was the mainstay.”

Mr. Handwerker ran the business until the family sold its stake to the Equicor Group, a private investment company, in 1987. He then retired to Florida.

Mr. Handwerker’s wife, Dorothy, died in 2009. He is survived by his sons, Steven, Kenneth and William; his brother, Sol; and several grandchildren.

At the company’s 70th-anniversary celebration near the Times Square Nathan’s in 1986, Mr. Handwerker was being given a hard time by Mayor Edward I. Koch, who complained about the demise of the five-cent hot dog. Grabbing the microphone, Mr. Handwerker explained to the crowd that the five-cent frankfurter went out with the five-cent subway ride.

Correction: May 20, 2011

An obituary on Monday about Murray Handwerker, the former chairman of the Nathan’s Famous hot dog chain, misidentified the company whose hot dogs President Franklin Delano Roosevelt served to the king and queen of England when they visited the United States in 1939. They came from Swift & Company, not from Nathan’s.

A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2011, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Murray Handwerker, 89, Dies; Made Nathan’s More Famous. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe